A Confusing NDP Photo

This picture came out yesterday from the NDP to show the party's position on the environment and the economy after some confusing comments from John Horgan about the Kinder Morgan pipeline on Tuesday.

The wording is odd because of how it can be read:

A strong economy means a healthy environment

The way I read the words is that if we have a strong economy we will have a healthy environment.   To me this is the most logical reading of the sentence.

Replace healthy environment with more income or early retirement and read the statement again.   As soon as you do that, it becomes clear the second phrase is intended to derived form or caused by the first.

I am certain this is not what the NDP intended because I asked some of them.   The NDP was trying to saying a strong economy comes from a healthy environment, which ultimately does not have to be true.

The NDP already has a problem with ambiguity because they are refusing to give the public any sense of how they would govern and what their priorities are for the province.   Releasing this ambiguous photo does not help people come to clarity on the NDP

I think what they wanted to say is a strong economy requires a healthy environment, but then again maybe they like the wording not being clear so there is nothing to hold them to?

 

Early Political Ads in the 2017 BC Election Cycle

I am going to try and look at all the various ads that come out in this election cycle.

Here is an NDP ad from this spring.   Clearly a strong negative campaign against Christy Clark.  This sort ad can work well in suppressing the BC Liberal vote by discouraging their supporters from voting.  It does very little to improve the NDP vote.
The danger of this is approach is that the focus becomes the other party and unless you can control the narrative there is a chance you will do much worse in the election.

Here is BC Liberal ad from August 1st    It is very boring and looks like a bland corporate video, but what it does do well is to put out a positive message about Christy Clark.   This is aimed at people that have supported the BC Liberals in the past and is intended to give them the comfort to vote for the party again.

You want a good ad, this 2012 ad is what people should be looking at.  If you are going to go negative it is best to do it with humour.   Even supporters of the BC Liberals can see the humour in this ad.

State of Nominations for the 2017 BC Election

I am quite stunned that it is the summer before the 2017 election and there are very few candidates actually nominated to run in the next provincial election.   If you are not the incumbent it takes a long time to build a campaign team that can give you a reasonable chance of winning given an electorate of about 40,000 voters.

The Greens will announce Andrew Weaver's nomination tomorrow which will be their first one followed by Adam Olsen on Wednesday

I believe independent Vicki Huntington will run again in Delta South but I have not yet seen anything to confirm this.

Among the BC Liberals 26 candidates have been nominated - 21 sitting MLAs and five new candidates, though one of those is Marc Dalton who was an MLA, resigned to run federally and lost.  
2013 we saw 18 of the MLAs elected as Liberals not run again which is why we going to see a much smaller number or retirements this time.  As of this time four Liberal MLAs are not running again.

I can only find evidence of a few nominations underway for the NDP with only Jagrup Brar being nominated so far.   I can not find any place on the NDP website showing who the candidates are.   There is no place where they highlight the team for 2017.

Three NDP MLAs have stated they will not run again.  Among the remaining 32 MLAs many of them have said they are running again but I can not find a clear list of who has stated they are running again and who has yet to declare.

In the last three elections the NDP had a lot of candidates nominated by this point in the election cycle.   The party needs to pick up a net of nine seats to get to government.   To have a chance of picking up nine seats the party needs to seriously try in about 20 ridings that it does not currently hold.   The NDP seems to be leaving things late and I can not figure out the strategy behind that.

Could the NDP run a focused campaign in 2016 and pick up just enough seats to win?

In 1996 the NDP managed to have a focused campaign to hold enough seats to stay in power. They needed 38 seats and won 39.



Top 13 NDP Target Seats
4 lost to BC Liberals in 2013
Fraser Nicola
Delta North
Surrey Fleetwood
Port Moody Coquitlam
(the NDP also lost Chilliwack Hope to the Liberals, but that was with a victory of almost 20pp)

(pp= precentage points)
9 where NDP was within 10pp
Penticton
Boundary Similkameen
Maple Rigde MIssion 
Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows
Surrey Guildford
Burnaby North
Vancouver Fraserview
North Vancouver Lonsdale
Courtenay Comox

Top 10 Liberal Target Seats
4 lost to the NDP
Burnaby Lougheed
Vancouver Point Grey
Vancouer Fairview
Saanich North and the Islands

6 where Liberals within 10pp
Skeena
North Island
Nanaimo 
Cowichan Valley
Coquitlam Millardville
Burnaby Deer Lake
Burnaby Lougheed

Top 6 Green Target Seats and the margin they need to overcome
Saanich North and the Islands - 1.2pp
Victoria Beacon HIll - 15pp
Cowichan Valley - 21pp
Esquimalt Metchosin - 27pp
Nelson Creston - 30pp
Victoria Swan Lake - 31pp

NDP Leadership Race

I responded to an Insights West survey today and one of the questions was who I thought would be a good choice or bad choice for NDP leader.   The selection of who they had on the list is interesting:

• Gregor Robertson
• Rob Fleming
• Kennedy Stewart
• Mike Farnworth
• David Eby

I wonder if they know something the rest of us do not?

I am surprised not to see some more names on the that list.  I had thought I would see George Heyman or Lana Popham's name on the list.

The BC NDP needs a new leader before next summer

The BC NDP may or may not chose May 25th 2014 as the date for the leadership vote.  As long as the BC NDP does not have the new leader of the party in place the party will remain in an awkward limbo.   It is not the government in waiting, it has no clear direction or agenda, it is just marking time till the leader is chosen.

The preparation for 2017 has to start soon and that means a clear vision, program and team for the NDP.   That can not start to happen until you know who the leader is going to be.  The next leader will attract the people that want to be part of the next NDP government.   They will also be able to get people to volunteer and donate to the party.  

The longer Adrian Dix is the leader the longer the party is not building towards winning the next election.  The sooner he is gone, the sooner the NDP MLAs can stop having to talk about him as a sainted political hero.  Somehow the NDP can not allow itself to openly criticize people within the party that screwed up - however you want to measure it, Adrian Dix carries the can for losing this election and deserves public critiques by the party for that.  Instead the NDP on the record says everyone is a great and a hard worker while in private ripping them to shreds.

It was clear on election night to anyone that knows anything about politics that Adrian Dix could not lead the NDP in the 2017 election.  All the people that might be the next leader knew this by 10 pm on election night.   Everyone possibly interested in the leadership has had since then to decide if they want to do it and if they can find the team.   All the serious candidates have already asked around informally who will support them.   May 25th 2014 is a reasonable date to choose a new leader and allows for a more than long enough campaign for the candidates.

It seems some people, most specifically Nathan Cullen, are not happy with this date and would like to see it delayed.   This makes no sense to me because the provincial and federal parties are one and the same group.  Cullen has strong connections in the NDP in BC and whether or not they are federal or provincial is irrelevant.

Cullen had a strong campaign team for the NDP federal leadership race in 2012.  In fact his team and his supporter lists are newer and fresher than the ones John Horgan or Mike Farnworth had from the last BC NDP leadership race.   The people he counted on support from in 2012 are all still within the lapsed member category and not expired as many of the people that joined the NDP for the 2011 provincial leadership race.  His desire to have a later leadership race can not be based on his ability to mount a serious campaign.

Here is a radical idea, do not allow mass sign ups.  Hold the leadership race within the existing membership.   Leadership races tend to attract large numbers of members to parties of people who are paper members and not really the people that will do the work for the party.   If you hold the race among the existing members you are talking to the people that have been active in the party and making things happen.

For the NDP to be a serious threat to win in BC, and not win as they did in 1991 because of the collapse of Social Credit, the party needs to do the hard work on the ground.   In some research I am doing I am finding the NDP was very thin on the ground for volunteers in this last election, I have only found a handful of candidates that had large enough teams to do a traditional get our the vote style of campaign.

The NDP has to create 85 active constituency associations.  By active I mean at least 200 members, active social media presence, and raising at least $10,000 per year locally.  This is not an impossible task but it means actually building a strong locally based volunteer organization across the province.   It will not happen as long as the party has a Adrian Dix as leader.  It will also not happen if the next leader is just charismatic and not someone that pushes for the party to build at the grassroots.

May 25th is a reasonable compromise.

Who will replace Adrian Dix as NDP leader?

I know Adrian Dix has not yet announced his resignation but it will come and the NDP will be lead by a new person in the 2017 election.   So who is likely to be the next leader?   Here is my attempt to try and think of who might run and have some chance of winning:

Current MLAs

• John Horgan - personally popular but can he win this time when he came third last time?
• Mike Farnworth - he came a close second in the last race but will he be getting too old to be leader?   He has also been an MLA from 1991-2001 and then since 2005.  That will be 22 years in the Legislature by the 2017 election. 
• Rob Flemming - I believe he has aspirations to be leader of the party and premier, he has organizational skills but might sit this race out and wait for the next one as he is 40 years old.
• Bruce Ralston - I think he harbours a desire to be leader and this would have to be the time he makes a run for it
• Geroge Heyman - strong ties to the public sector unions will be not be a positive but on the other hand the NDP might want to use his time as executive director of the Sierra Club of BC to try to weaken the Green Party.
• Kathy Corrigan - She comes from a strong NDP organization in Burnaby.   If a women were to run, she is one of the few I would see doing it, though she is close to 60 years old.
• Lana Popham - She has a strong personal following that is mainly from outside of traditional NDP circles.  She might be convinced to run to offer a different vision of the NDP.
• Dave Eby, Nicholas Simons, Ray Chouhan, and Harry Bains might consider running

Not currently MLAs

• Joe Trasolini - I am 100% certain his decision to be an NDP MLA was because he wanted to be in government and wanted to have a chance to be premier someday.  He may have been defeated in May but he is not traditional NDP
• Gregor Robertson - people may see him as a white knight to come in and save the NDP
• Nathan Cullen - he did better than expected in the federal NDP race.   He might be seen as having enough standing and gravitas to come in from Ottawa and help the NDP win
• Federal MPs Peter Julian, Fin Donnelly, and Kennedy Stewart might run

I am not convinced there are other mayors in BC that have enough standing that I would expect them to run.

I am once again surprised at the lack of many strong female candidates that I can come up with that might be in the running.